Overview
“Surreal, disturbing, frequently brilliant. Nobody like him.”—Time Out
“David Goodis is the mystery man of hardboiled fiction…he wrote of winos and bar-room piano players and small-time thieves in a vein of tortured lyricism all his own…He was the poet of the losers.”—Geoffrey O’Brien
It’s winter in Philadelphia. Hart is broke, freezing, looking for a place to lay low from the cops. If he can’t find somewhere soon he might do something rash—like accept a wallet containing $11,000 from a man dying from gunshot wounds in the street. Whoever killed him might have a bed, though, even if that means hanging out with a bunch of thieves and drifters. Lucky for Hart he’s handy with his fists. And if he can use his looks and smarts to get in with the gang, maybe he can ride this out and score big on his own.
Originally published in 1954, Black Friday is one of David Goodis’ leanest, meanest melancholy thrillers. In this edition, the novel is combined with the best of Goodis’ short stories, first written for pulp magazines in America over 50 years ago and published for the first time in book form.
One of the greatest an American crime writers, David Goodis was born in Philadelphia in 1917, and wrote his first novel, Retreat from Oblivion, in 1938. He died in 1967.
From the author of Dark Passage, a riveting thriller about a doomed man sorting his way among the perverse loyalties and passions of a family of criminals. Filled with coiled menace and eerie authenticity, Black Friday is a foray into a world where no one has anything left to lose and malice is the only motive for survival.